


breaking free (soaring, flying)

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comedian Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Established Relationship, Fictional Transcripts, M/M, Stand-Up Comedy, Vignettes, a fictional true crime podcast somewhere in there, a heathers cameo, mentions of benverly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 23:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20804525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: If you’re wondering how I, a comedian, got together with that, I’ve got no idea either. I guess [Jeff Goldblum Voice:] love, uh, finds a way.or: vignettes from Richie's career, after coming out, as told through transcripts of his YouTube videos.





	breaking free (soaring, flying)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from High School Musical's "Breaking Free", because I refuse to take IT seriously and you shouldn't either. the author is dead and it's my city now. I should be writing CritRole but this seized me and refused to let go.
> 
> **Content Warning:** Richie more than once uses the word "homo", and there is some light discussion of homophobia, a canonical homophobic attack, and a canonical suicide.

_Richie Tozier - Cream-Filled Tiny Snack Boyfriend  
Just For Laughs_

I have a confession to make, ladies and gentlemen: I have _no idea_ what a twink is.

_[scattered audience laughter]_

I don’t! I know what a beard is, I can kind of extrapolate what a bear is for a gay person besides a large animal that lives in the forest and attacks your car, and, god help me, I googled “daddy gay man” just yesterday out of curiosity and now the images are just _burned into my brain_. _[laughter]_ But I still have no fucking clue what the _fuck_ a twink is. Twunk?

Which, you know, usually that’s fine by me. My fiancé and I are forty, we’ve had thirty years of small-town brand gay repression under our belts, I’ve come to accept that all you younger homos are going to come up with more and more euphemisms to describe fucking and other activities, and we’re never ever gonna be able to keep up. We can’t! We’re forty, I get back pain for a week if I sleep wrong! But this one word twink is just—I don’t get it. I especially don’t get it when it’s applied to my boyfriend, like, okay? I guess? Maybe?

I googled this word a few days ago writing this bit, to understand. The first result I got? _Twinkies_. For like, ten whole confusing seconds I thought somebody was calling Eds a cream-filled tiny snack they wanted to eat, which, no, fuck off, first of all that’s my boyfriend who I’m going to marry, get your own cream-filled tiny snack boyfriend. _[scattered laughter]_ Second of all, as a sign that we’ve been together so long he’s infected me with his cleanliness bug, the next thought trailing just behind that first one was, _[voice pitched slightly higher, as if doing an impression:] Wow, that’s unsanitary, I hope these kids don’t get some kind of mouth disease._

_[audience laughter]_

My boyfriend’s a hypochondriac! That’s not his fault, that’s the effect of his mom’s severely creepy Münchausen by proxy syndrome. If you’re wondering how I, a comedian, got together with that, I’ve got no idea either. I guess _[Jeff Goldblum Voice:]_ _love, uh, finds a way._ _[laughter]_ But anyway—while he’s gotten better since we were kids and he would chatter about AIDS from hangnails, it’s still a bit like dating WebMD. Every time I even look at a cheeseburger loaded with _two_ bacon-wrapped patties, more cheese than _High School Musical_, and at least two whole bottles of mayo on it, even when I’m _alone_, he’s still there in the back of my head going, _Richie, if you eat that cheeseburger, you are going to die of a heart attack right there in the restaurant._ Which would be a hilariously shitty way to die, and also I don’t want to die before I get married, turns out.

He’s also a risk analyst. Yeah, that’s the perfect job for a hypochondriac, he gets to _analyze risks_ for a living. He is _paid_ to tell people _if you touch that company you are going to go bankrupt in a year and have to sell your body on the streets_. _[laughter]_ Back in our little Maine town he’d have gotten his dweeb ass beat if he told someone that! Out here people fall all over themselves to get him to tell them all the horrible ways they’re gonna go bankrupt and die! And I got all of that for free since age nine! _[a genuine grin as the audience laughs]_ I am, sincerely speaking, the fucking luckiest man alive.

So you can imagine, he’s not the sort of person who would appreciate being called a cream-filled junk food. I have that thought for ten whole seconds before I scroll down and get even more confused. Because apparently, _twink_ means a young, attractive, thin man with no body hair. And Eds is attractive, sure, but again: _forty._ Forty, and I dunno if you noticed but he’s got body hair! _I_ have body hair! Neither of us can be assed to shave or wax it off, waxing’s too painful and our pain tolerance went way down when we got older, and I stopped giving a shit about my body hair ten years ago, I don’t give a shit what he does with his. Either somebody who has never met a twenty-year-old in their life looked at this forty-year-old GQ-model motherfucker and said _yeah, that guy is absolutely twenty years old,_ or gay slang is changing on us, _again_.

\--

_Richie Tozier’s Airport Hell | Netflix Is A Joke  
Netflix Is A Joke_

So me and Eds, when we’re not on a date and I’m not touring or acting, we just like to stay home, y’know? We got this cat, we’re trying to get her accustomed to us, which is true but also is an excuse for us to _not go anywhere_. Our friends are gonna be like, _hey, Rich, Eddie, we’re gonna go skydiving in the Andes, we’re gonna watch whales try to fuck off the coast of San Francisco, we’re gonna work on our tans in Miami and fuck on the beach, we’re thinking maybe we can go to this restaurant that’s underwater and serves paper-thin slices of carrots grown on the fucking moon, do you guys maybe wanna come,_ and we’re like, _no, we’re trying to get our horrible new cat to like us enough so she won’t throw up in Richie’s only presentable dress shoes._ What a little bitch. _[audience laughter]_ We’re making progress, she hacked up a hairball in _Eddie’s_ shoes instead of mine yesterday, but anyway.

So last week, I’m not sure if you noticed, but I was on _Saturday Night Live._ _[audience cheers]_ Thanks, I met Panic! at the Disco, y’know, the guy who did Bohemian Rhapsody for _Suicide Squad_, I think that was him? _[audience laughter]_ Anyway, last week, before I went on the show, my boyfriend and I had to go through the airport. Let me tell you, that was _hell_.

_[scattered laughter from the audience]_

Yeah, I know! Airports are a circle of hell we all have to go through. You step into an airport and I swear to you, the first thing you’ll hear is _welcome to hell, motherfucker_. _[audience laughter]_ So, day of our flight, you guys know me, I just pack clothes, my laptop, maybe, if I’m feeling real intellectual, a picture book of dogs getting treats. I have one bag for my bathroom stuff, a little plastic baggie for meds, and one suitcase for my stuff, and that’s it for me. And then Eddie, here’s Eddie, with like _four fucking suitcases_, it’s insane. I’m like, _Eds, sweetheart, spaghetti-man, what’s all this for, how’re we gonna fit all this in the car_ and he stares at me like I’ve grown a new head and goes, _these are for our trip to New York, I brought spare meds and a first-aid kit and clothes and shoes and toiletries, where the fuck’s your shit._ And I just…

_[gestures to imaginary bag hanging from his shoulder and imaginary suitcase]_

And he’s like _Rich, babe, if you’re going to New York for a week what the fuck are you doing with one suitcase and one bag,_ and I’m just like, _Eds it’s a week!_ And he goes, _A lot could happen in a week! Anything could happen! You have to be prepared! You could get Ebola from a passing tourist then where the fuck would we all be, huh? And that’s not getting into the airport! What happens if the airport loses your luggage, huh? What happens if you touch something and it turns out to have been touched by someone who was sick on their flight huh?_

I talked him down to three suitcases, but we still had to pay extra just to haul all that shit to the airplane. And, okay, listen, this is just the most adorable fucking thing ever—we get to the airport, right? I’m hauling our shit out and then I look in the passenger window and he’s just like, _[looks grimly determined and holds the expression as audience laughs]_, like that! And he’s pulling on fucking rubber gloves! This is the first time I’ve ever gone to the airport with him, I didn’t realize he had gloves for airport use! _[chuckles]_ God, this fucking dweeb. I can’t believe he lets me touch his ass sometimes without gloves, there is a god and he has blessed me, personally. _[audience laughter]_

Anyway, so we step into the airport. Right away, we have to get all our shit scanned. Right away, my boyfriend fights a fucking TSA agent. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, just that one moment I’m just watching our stuff go through the conveyor belt and wondering if somebody’s gonna ask me what I’m doing with what looks like a book about dogs and treats, the next Eddie and a guard are arguing about fucking powder. And he is incandescently _pissed_. It’s kinda hot, I’m into it, and I’m standing there with my mouth open like I’m watching a shirtless Chris Evans emerging from a metal cocoon ready to fuck some shit up. I remember exactly none of their argument. My brain completely shut my ears off so it could exclusively concentrate on Eddie. My brain has some great priorities.

And then I remember we’re in the middle of the airport and we have a flight to catch. So I very reluctantly have to pry him away from the guard, but I sneak the powder into my jacket just for him, so, ha.

\--

_How Richie Tozier Met His Boyfriend (Again)  
Comedy Central Stand-Up_

I grew up in a small town in Maine called Derry. You can find it on a map, it’s somewhere between Racism-ville and Homophobia-town, and if you look it up you’ll find that it’s number one in disappearances and murders. _[weakly pumps a fist into the air]_ Yayyyyy, Derry, the true crime podcaster’s wet dream. God, the amount of true crime podcasts centered around this one fucking town, how’d I manage to survive to high school?

_[scattered laughter]_

I mean, a guy murdered his dad! A guy I knew from school! Granted, he was a piece of work even before he killed his fucking dad but, y’know, that shit’s just not something you can predict from someone.

Anyway, so I moved out of town when I was eighteen, and I didn’t look back. But then—well, you guys know the story, already. Friend dies, other friend calls us all back, we reunite, kind of a harrowing time emotionally speaking and somewhere along the way, I end up reconnecting with my crush to such a point that we, uh, made out on my other friend’s couch. _[scattered laughter]_ What I didn’t really go into when I was apologizing, though, was that somehow, over the time we had not contacted each other, all of my friends—_all of them_—got blindingly, stupidly _hot_.

_[audience laughter]_

You’ve gotta understand, when we were kids we were like, snotnosed little bastards with too-big glasses and baby fat and fanny packs, we were being picked on by bullies, we called ourselves the Losers’ Club! We were _fucking losers_, and then almost thirty years later when I come back, they’ve all aged like fine, really expensive wines in big-ass underground cellars in secret locations you have to sign multiple NDAs to enter. And then there’s me and my forehead, which is practically a whole goddamned person all on its own.

First people I saw were Bev and Ben. Bev, when she was a kid, kinda looked a little like Molly Ringwald, y’know? And now here she is and she looks like she stepped off a GQ magazine, suit and all. Ben, god, Ben was this short, fat nerd kid who walked around with a backpack full of books about Derry’s history, and now he looks like he should be headlining _action movies_, spouting shit like _[deep, Action Hero voice:] we save the President from the terrorists who’ve invaded the White House, or we die trying_. God. _[shakes his head as audience laughs]_ I guess hauling those books around really helped him out, huh.

They’re engaged now, by the way. _[applause]_ Thanks, I won like ten dollars and a soda pop off Eddie, we’ve been betting on them getting together since we were thirteen.

So Ben hugs me, right? In the back of my head, my repressed gay lizard brain immediately goes, like the video of those guys in that one advice podcast with the car, _[unspecific McElroy voice] Hot Boy Hot Boy Hot Boy_.

_[audience laughter]_

I know! I know! Fuck, I know. Jesus. And then we walk in, and I’m picking up the remnants of my brain from the pavement and trying to put them back together in working order. My lizard brain’s still shrieking, and I’m like _fucking shut up lizard brain._ And I see that everybody else? Already inside. Already talking. Also, _already hot._ Mike, holy shit, Mike looks like he should be selling Old Spice, riding backwards, on a horse, while women just _swoon_ over his eight-pack. _[audience laughter]_ I think he’s got an eight-pack? I’m pretty sure he does. Maybe he has a ten-pack. He looks like the kind of guy who’d have a ten-pack, and also, what the fuck, he was just as snotnosed and awkward as the rest of us. What the fuck, that’s not fair.

Bill’s right beside Mike. You guessed it, he’s also hot. Like, windswept hair, soulful eyes, the works. It’s like I just walked into an A-list romantic comedy, and Bill’s the main love interest. I mean, this guy, he looks like the guy who wins the girl in rom-coms. He looks like he’d be right behind Mike, wearing Old Spice, bunch of girls on his motorcycle fawning over his muscles. I’m fucking pissed off by this point, like, how dare all my asshole friends be smoking hot at forty and leave me with my forehead and my soda-stained Hawaiian shirt, you fucking dicks. _[audience laughter]_ Fuck off, be on my side here.

And then I see Eddie.

Up until that point, you know, I had something of a chance to make it out of there with the tatters of my dignity intact, because every single one of my friends had somehow gotten hot, but it was hot enough that I could handle it. I could sit there, be as okay as possible with a dead friend and my little secret, and I’d be just fine. But Eddie?

_[makes an explosion noise, audience laughs]_

No chance. No fucking chance at _all_. Second I saw him, it was just like, Celine Dion playing in the distance, _[terrible, off-key Celine Dion voice:] it’s all coming back, it’s all coming back to me nowwwww._ _[audience laughter]_ I swear, if they make a movie about my life, I want that single moment to be scored with Celine Dion, with soft, romantic lighting. I also want me to be played by Kit Harington, so at least some version of me stands a chance against all my insanely, unfairly hot friends.

Eddie...well. He was a snotnosed little brat, like the rest of us, who had two fanny-packs and wore red shorts that I had multiple little crises over when I was thirteen. He was, if you can believe it, even _more_ health-conscious than he is now. He was like, this pint-sized sun of fury and health, and if you’ll excuse the sappiness, I was the wisecracking planet populated by your mom jokes. Cut to twenty years later, and he’s just—the whole restaurant could’ve been invaded by aliens come to enslave and/or kill us all and I would not have known, because for a solid thirty seconds I was stunned. Just, like, stunned. Completely paralyzed, completely unaware, nothing coming out from the old thinker or even repressed gay lizard brain. Only thing coming in was him.

_[pause to hold a completely stunned expression, then, in an unspecified McElroy voice:] Hot boy hot boy hot boy._

_[audience laughter]_

And then two days of dancing around the not-Ben-sized elephant in the room later we were making out on my friend’s couch, because it turns out he’s as much of a repressed homo as I am.

\--

_richie talks about his bf on small town crime  
smalltowncrimefan_

**Veronica Sawyer, host of Small Town Crime:** —grew up in Derry, Maine, right? Did you ever think something about it was off?

**Richie Tozier:** Yeah, we did. Honestly, not really? Not up until we were like, eleven or twelve and formed the Losers’ Club, that was when we met Ben and he told us Derry’s the number one most dangerous town in America for kids since god fucking knows when. Before then Eddie and I just thought shit was _normal_: missing kids posters everywhere, child murders, might’ve been a cult in town but I don’t know.

**VS:** You don’t know? I feel like a cult might’ve been like, pretty fucking obvious even to a kid.

**RT:** Man, I was balancing repressing my big gay crush on Eddie with typical puberty problems, “child murder cult” was at the bottom of my priority list.

**VS:** _[quiet laugh]_ Honestly, y’know what, I can respect that. What was it like, looking back?

**RT:** Like any other small, rural, mostly-conservative town with a too-high crime rate, I’d say. We had a curfew at seven but I usually snuck out to go hang out with Eds, because I was a little rascal then and my parents conked out early. Mrs. K would usually never let me, alone, hang out with Eddie so I’d shimmy up the drainpipe and knock on his window, and we’d hold sleepovers, read comics, and then in the wee hours of the morning I’d sneak off and go back to my house. At no point did it ever occur to me that _oh shit I might get murdered_, I think the big gay crush crowded that part out.

**VS:** How’s it feel, looking back, knowing what your town’s famous for, knowing what happened there?

**RT:** It was—I don’t talk about this part a whole lot in my stand-up, just because it’s pretty raw and people are still talking about it, and I’m not _that_ much of an asshole, but right before my friend Stan died, Adrian Mellon’s attack happened, and then there was that shitstorm on social media about my town. I look back, and I’m very, very glad that I got out, that Eddie got out. Even in the 80s, when that shit ran rampant, Derry was fucking exceptional about it. I heard that it’s starting to make teeny bits of progress now, they elected new people trying to reform shit, but for us—thirty years of repression left too deep a mark on me and on Eddie, for us to willingly consider going back to town. Can’t take that shit back.

\--

_East Coast V West Coast FIGHT | Richie Tozier Just Louder  
Richie Tozier_

So my fiancé and I might’ve come from the same shitty little town in Maine, but we went some very different directions in life. He went to the East Coast, I went to the West Coast, and we have brought our own unique brands of coastal superiority to our relationship. So much so that, more than Barry Manilow and the number of suitcases we should bring on airplanes, it’s gonna threaten our relationship. _[audience laughter]_ Seriously! We went to New York for Saturday Night Live, he takes me to this restaurant that’s been standing since, fuck, I don’t know, Abraham Lincoln got shot dead? It’s called the Peter Luger Steakhouse, and he apparently has been dying to show it to me because he fucking _hates_ In-n-Out, so much that he’s willing to risk the cholesterol just to get one over on it.

Fuck did In-n-Out ever do to you, Eds, Christ.

_[scattered laughter]_

Thank you, two to three motherfuckers who agree with me.

Anyway, I take one bite of their burgers and—it’s good. God help me. It’s really fucking good. It’s like angels came down from heaven and sang hymns about this goddamn burger, it’s fucking trascendental, I swear to god. But Eddie’s just staring at me across the table like he is _expecting_ me to say all that, and then he would _win_. My pride might be in tatters but it’s still there, and it’s just come up with the greatest zinger for this situation, so I just swallow the burger and put it down and I just lean in like this.

_[leans in as if on a table]_

And I says to him, I says, “I’ve tasted ass better than this.”

_[audience laughter]_

The _look_ on his face, the utter, potent _rage_—I swear to god for a hot second there I thought he was going to have me taken the fuck out or something, Christ.

Afterwards we argued on the street, on the way back to our hotel, and then I told him on the way up to our room that his ass was the only ass I’ve ever tasted, so, y’know, take it as a compliment. And he thought it was sweet! I could tell he thought it was sweet! But I could also tell that his coastal pride was winning out over the sweetness, and yet, I’m _shocked_ when he says, “I’ve tasted better steaks than your dick,” and just. Bounces out of the elevator, like an asshole.

_[audience laughter]_

_[sincerely:]_ I love him so much, he’s my dream boy.


End file.
